It is hard for civilised men at home, accustomed to hold themselves
under control, to realise how a man's mind can run away from him when he
is thousands of miles separated from his dear ones, and has a kind of
spiritual certainty that evil is befalling them.
I don't think I am a bigger fool than most men in that way, but I shiver
even yet at the memory of all the torment I went through during those
days of waiting, for my whole life seemed to revolve before me and I
accused myself of a thousand offences which I had thought dead and
buried and forgotten.
Some of these were trivial in themselves, such as hot and intemperate
words spoken in childhood to my good old people at home, disobedience or
ingratitude shown to them, with all the usual actions of a naughty boy,
who ought to have been spanked and never was.
But the worst of them concerned my darling, and came with the thought of
my responsibility for the situation in which I felt sure she found
herself.
A thousand times I took myself to task for that, thinking what I ought
and ought not to have done, and then giving myself every bad name and my
conduct every damning epithet.
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